Q: I keep seeing "farther" and "further" used interchangeably. Have the rules changed? From a full page ad for "Jet Suite": "Flights further West possible but subject to higher rates." But this is from a newspaper story about an artist: "Farther ...
Asked to use "cliche" in a sentence, a student once responded, "My father came home last night with a cliche on his face." When the puzzled teacher asked the student to define "cliche," he replied, "a tired, worn-out expression."
Before you're ...
Q. In a series of nouns, e.g., " ... grounds, buildings, vehicles, and bus shelters," I was taught to put a comma after all of them except the last in the series; in this case, that would include a comma after the next-to-last item, "vehicles." ...
Q: It drives me nuts to hear things like "It wasn't too good of a game." Is this usage ever correct? --Cynthia Ashworth, Granby, Conn.
A: The unnecessary "of" occurs quite often in spoken English, but all usage authorities condemn its use in ...
The words "volunteer," "volley" and "volume" all share the same syllable: "vol." But does that mean they share a common origin?
Nope. Each is derived from a different Latin root.
"Volunteer" comes from the Latin root "vol-," a stem of the Latin ...
Q: I've been hearing a word more and more frequently, mostly during movie or book reviews on NPR -- "trope." My dictionary defines "trope" as the figurative use of a word or expression, a figure of speech. But the meaning the speakers give it is ...
